Here's my evaluation after 6 hours (as spoiler free as possible):
Wait and see. This game could go either way depending on your interests and the direction developers take. Overall score, not modified for the fact that it's early access, is 6/10.
To begin with, it's early access. That mean's there's going to be hiccups. I've noticed my fair share of graphical glitches: a dagger being held in an open hand with palm turned down, a ring that passes through the hand from palm to... back of the hand, whatever that's called, a druid grove with a GIGANTIC rendering anomaly right in the middle of it. Loading times can be long, even with my m.2 SSD. Loading in the first big area after the intro area takes several minutes. Quick loading to save scum also can take a minute or more. I've had quest givers appear on the minimap that offer no quest when I talk to them. That means that either the dialogue is bugged and the quest isn't being offered properly or their minimap status as a quest giver is bugged (they shouldn't be flagged until I've opened the questline). The combat options/controls are a little wonky and it occasionally results in your character attacking nothing and wasting your only Action for the round. To me these are early access issues and should be ironed out. The biggest concern is that there doesn't appear to be an in-game reporting feature so it's not convenient for early access participants to actually help iron them out.
Now, on to the game.
Race and class selection is currently limited. I know Larian has said that this is due to early access and more will be released but if I had a dollar for every game developer's broken promise I'd have a shitload of dollars. It's interesting that the early access includes "core" classes (fighter, cleric, wizard, rogue) and two "advanced" classes (warlock, ranger). Not sure why those two extra classes were selected over other options (paladin, monk, sorceror, barbarian, bard, druid). Extra weird because there is a druid grove in the game, so druids are in the programming. Also interesting that the ranger appears to be the "alternate" ranger and not the Player's Handbook Ranger (which is widely believed to be the suckiest class). I haven't broken out the source materials to be sure, just basing this on the selection of favored enemy.
Other character items of note:
- The spell list is either incomplete or complete but truncated. I don't know if Larian plans to add more spells, currently a cleric has about 8 choices available at 1st level while there are at least 16 1st level spells in D&D. Did they omit some because they're "useless?" Maybe, we'll see.
- Some game rules have been modified and this can affect characters. For example, pretty much all characters can Disengage or Hide as a Bonus Action. These are supposed to be Actions. Larian made this change for "gameplay" reasons. However, this severely nerfs the Rogue as one of their key class abilities at Level 2 is to Disengage, Hide or Dash as a Bonus Action. They're the only ones to get this and it's supposed to increase their versatility and utility. By giving 2/3 of the ability to everyone, Rogues become less useful and the Level 2 advancement for Rogue is essentially 1d8 hp and nothing else.
- EDITED: Character creation is done on a point buy system. But it appears to be that Larian is using the variant point buy system from the Player's Handbook. All your Ability Scores start at 8, then your racial modifiers are applied. You get 27 points to allocate and the game will suggest an allocation; you can unallocate them and start from scratch. The point buy appears to be 1 point to modify an Ability Score with an EXISTING modifier of +1 or less and 2 points to modify an EXISTING modifier of +2. In other words scores of 9-14 cost 1 additional point each and scores of 15-17 cost 2 additional points. Also, because Larian is using this variant rule it caps ability scores at natural 15, meaning a human can't have anything above 16 and other races can't have anything above 17. This will disappoint some players as it's common to use systems that allow up to natural 18 at creation.
EDITED: Races are a bit limited. Core 5e D&D has 9 races. BG3 early access offers 8 but one, Drow, is technically a subrace of Elf and not a standalone race and another, Githyanki, is a non-core race. Core races missing currently are Dragonborn, Gnome, and Half-orc. I guess they included Githyanki because of the Illithid tie-in but I am curious if other, more
popular, non-core races will appear later on, things like Goliath and Aasimar.
Background choices are also extremely limited. Character modeling choices also very limited: a handful of face choices, maybe double that number in hairstyles, a dozen or so tattoo options and a similar number of "makeup" options. Color selection appears ok. Compared to prior BG games where the 2D sprites could have 2 colors customized and a portrait selected this is arguably quite a bit more. It's also arguably less, since customized portraits arguably offer more "customization" than the faces and hairstyles available in BG3. And compared to a 6-year old game like DA:I the customization options are pathetic.
The UI needs work. Selecting melee vs ranged attack can be cumbersome and slightly imprecise targeting means it is possible to target nothing and waste your action. As you pick up items that can be used in your adventure they get dumped into a hotbar that has no order to it. Inventory is also unordered and I didn't see a way to sort it easily. Some special abilities, like a Rogue's Sneak Attack, end up in the general item hotbar. Which brings up Sneak Attack. Why is it an extra button? The game can calculate when Sneak Attack applies so why do I have to actively turn it on for an applicable attack? Why can't the game just apply Sneak Attack? And why are there TWO Sneak Attacks? Do we really need to differentiate between a melee and ranged Sneak Attack? The game should just apply Sneak Attack to whatever attack type you've selected. And yes, I know there is a case wherein Sneak Attack applies only once per round so a Rogue with a couple levels of Fighter and access to Action Surge needs to differentiate between the first and second Action being the Sneak Attack but that's an outlier and shouldn't drive the 99% of uses where the Rogue will only take 1 Action and that will be a Sneak Attack if eligible.
The tutorial needs work. It hardly exists. I know 5e D&D so I'm just having trouble learning Larian's interpretation of them but if I was coming in blind it would be overwhelming. There are some tooltips and a few popups but most of the game systems and UI interactions go completely unexplained. For example, let's look at selling stuff. There are the normal "vendor" NPCs that you can trigger through the dialogue tree ("Show me your wares."). But did you also know you can trade with other random NPCs you encounter? Probably not, because in order to do so you need to click one of the four or so unlabeled and unexplained buttons in the lower left corner of a dialogue cutscene. And don't push the wrong unlabeled and unexplained button or instead of initiating commerce you'll attack that NPC!
Once you do successfully initiate commerce you'll be at an unusual "barter" screen. Oh, it shows your entire inventory and the NPC's entire inventory. And I guess you buy stuff by dragging it from the NPC's inventory to the area in the middle. But the value/cost of things that you tooltip over isn't the value/cost the NPC wants from you. Which makes commerce frustrating as you don't know how much something will cost by looking at it, you have to put it in the center area and if it costs too much you have to remove it. Ok, let's sell something. I'll just take my garbage items and move them over, and... click "barter?" No, he's not offering me anything. Oh, he's got a pile of gold in his inventory, I need to select his gold and move it into the barter area. But it defaults to splitting his stack in half, so I have to manually adjust the gold to exact value of what I'm selling. If it's even 1gp too high or too low the transaction will be declined by his credit card processor. Very unintuitive commerce interface. And you'll notice that I keep calling it "commerce" and not "trade." That's because there is a separate selector that's not highlighted that will change the transaction from "barter" mode to "trade" mode. What's the difference? I don't know, the game never explains it. I do know that some of my items aren't available in "trade" mode. Does that mean the vendor doesn't want them? I don't know. I never could get a "trade" transaction to complete.
Gameplay. So far it's been ok. Movement is "real-time" and combat is turn-based. It's a departure from prior BG games where it was presented as "real-time with pause" (even though the engine did the calculations as turn-based). Turn-based seems to work well in this implementation, I'm not sure if that's because of 5e rules or Larian's implementation or some combination. Combat has an X-Com style feel to it. It's MUCH better than the turn-based combat in D&D "classic" Tomb of Elemental Evil. That game was entirely turn-based and an absolute slog to explore areas.
Default keybinds are a bit wonky. Highlighting objects defaults to left Alt instead of Tab. EDITED: Highlighting also doesn't highlight all objects, it appears to only highlight obejcts you can pick up, not objects you can interact with. Screen movement is WASD but camera rotation is Insert/Delete. You can remap screen rotation to QE (where it should default to IMO) but then you have to remap QE because they're used for menu hotkeys. And once you start down that rabbit hole you can quickly find yourself remapping ALL of the keybinds. Screen rotation also defaults to middle mouse (for me) but with my mouse wheel it means I often mis-click or inadvertently zoom in/out (which is the mouse wheel default mapping).
Pathfinding can be off. I've definitely had characters die because they decided to run through fire (while not in combat) on their way to the destination instead of running around. I also found out that if your main character does something like jump across a ravine you either have to manually jump all your others across or wait
forever for the AI to figure it out. If you just jump over and move on the rest of your party will just stand at the ravine and never make any attempt to path back around to you.
Dialogue is good, for the most part and voice acting is solid. The narrator is very good, though why some of the protagonist's part is narrated, some of it is voice acted and some of it is just subtitled is beyond me.
Ability/skill checks can be weird. Some of them are passive/automatic checks and others are part of the dialogue tree. There's not a lot of discernable evidence as to why one might be automatic and one might be triggered. Display of skill check dice rolls may be a bit unfamiliar: a check in which the character has a +3 bonus and the Difficulty Class (DC) is 10 shows as a straight d20 roll against a DC7. In other words, it applies your modifiers to the DC for a straight roll. It works, just not in a way that many RPG players are used to. I've not had a roll at disadvantage yet (roll twice and take the lower roll) but I have had an advantage roll (roll twice and take the higher roll). The tooltip explains advantage, but the explanation isn't technically accurate ("Roll 1d20+1 and take the higher roll" should be "Roll 1d20+1
TWICE and take the higher roll") and the implementation presents incorrectly; the player only sees the d20 roll once.
There is a combat tracker-style box where you can see the results of attack rolls, etc. but for me it defaults to collapsed. Once I expand it it doesn't automatically scroll to keep up with the action, which makes it rather useless. That's frustrating because, similar to the X-Com comparison I mentioned above, when you target a adversary a tooltip will tell you the chance of hitting. And, like X-Com, I've had LOTS of 95%, 90%, etc. attacks miss in a row. A 95% tooltip should mean "Don't roll a 1!" but the combat tracker doesn't do a good job of keeping track of combat. EDITED: The 95% tooltip is odd. On a d20 a 95% chance to hit literally is "Roll a 2 or higher." But in 5e D&D the default Armor Class is 10. My character has a +3 to hit from his ability score and a +2 from weapon proficiency. Using the "Larian method" of calculating rolls this means the DC of the attack against an unarmored foe is 5 (base 10 AC minus 5 from my bonuses). Since an attack hits on a tie (roll = Armor Class) the enemy would have to have a -3 penalty to AC for my roll to be a 95% chance to hit. The match just doesn't add up.
I've had to do lots of save scumming. I've had lots of ability checks fail on rolls where the overwhelming odds were in my favor. But the game also stacks ability checks in succession and a single failure can ruin it all. For example, I had one sequence like this:
- Passive perception check to notice something. Check appears easy but I don't know for sure. Fail it and the entire sequence fails.
- Passive check to recognize something. Check appears easy but I don't know for sure. Fail it and the entire sequence fails.
- Active ability check to notice something. Check is easy. Fail it and the entire sequence fails.
- Active ability check to do something. Check is easy. Fail it and the entire sequence fails.
- Active ability check to do something. Check is moderate. Fail it and the entire sequence fails.
To have 5 (FIVE!) checks that all need to succeed is ridiculous, poor design. Then, in practice my results typically were:
- Pass the passive check, don't know by how much.
- Pass the passive check, don't know by how much.
- Pass the active check, need a 7 roll an 18.
- Pass the active check, need a 9 roll a 16.
- Fail the active check, need a 14 roll a 2.
I had to scum that a dozen or so times to get five passes and almost every one of my failures was by beating the easy rolls by a ton and then losing the moderate roll. Makes me suspicious of the RNG. I did find the interaction the Ars writer mentioned with the Intelligence and Wisdom checks in succession. I agree, as stated above, that successive checks are poor design, especially when they're uncomplementary stats like INT and WIS. Add in that it's part of a decision tree in which you THINK you're going down the correct path but success means
INSTANT DEATH, that's bullshit.
Finally, I'll say that the game doesn't necessarily offer clear directions on what you should be doing. Once you get to the first big area you're given some vague idea of what to do ("Find help!") and you can wander around a bit and pick up some companions. But soon you're offered a few different paths to your goal plus some side paths. There's no indication of which ones are best. No indication that a quest might be of a certain level. And pretty soon you might find your one level 2 character against 4 level 3 harpies because your party didn't pathfind to you properly and the harpies are right next to what I assume is a level 2 area.
I haven't spent 15 hours in game and I don't want my 15 hours back. I can see potential here. There's a LOT to be done to finish it. When it's finished I can see it being a solid-but-not-great RPG. I haven't advanced the story much but so far I can't see this as a "rightful" Baldur's Gate game. That may change later on but right now it's a "5e D&D game that uses the city of Baldur's Gate as an excuse to tie it into an existing, successful franchise" game.
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